Disclaimer: I'm musician and once I recorded bunch of pieces which took about 2 years of my life (real instruments, real voice, real mixing). Yeah, I'm perfectionist, sue me. They're released under CC now.
Sorry, but you are wrong and you can claim us as enemies as much as you want - you *don't* have any God/Nature/whatever given rights to profit. You have to earn it. Can't do it as performer or musician, you're not good enough, not lucky enough - sorry, but that's life. That's how things IS for rest of us. Why you should be different, huh? Why people who contributions are really worthy to public releases their copyrighted works under CC or PD or allow share non-commercially? Not all they earn big bucks. So tell me? Maybe they admit that music is just for their hearts, that it's not necessary to bring them profit?
For song and movie it is quite clear that even 20 years from publishing is way too much, but I could live with that. Tell me how many songs have gained creds for their owners after 20 years? Several performers comes into mind, all swimming in money already earned from these songs.
These extensions are not for performers, they're not for authors - they are for companies so they can claim that song is actually their property (according to law, it's not) and so they can tell shareholders - hey, we have billions worth of property, invest in us.
I second this. It is not that humans aren't greedy - they are, it's our survival instinct. But as you said, we justify and glorify it. We don't think about it as thing we could fix. In fact we do - sharing ideologies have brought more practical applications to real world than greed actually have done in last five years. I actually believe it's practically possible, trough education and clever public programs, rise awareness of possibility to share, to live together in balanced society.
I think we see it as dead end because we don't like other exits from this dilemma. Humans are animals at best Darwinist sense (no matter what Christians believes to. In fact it's written in Bible that we are "sinners" - we act on instinct and we don't know good from bad, because hey, I wanna live). They have instincts and most important - survival instinct.
It IS possible to crossbreed community rule AND survival instinct. However, even discussing this seems to be blasphemous in Capitalism. No one even tries to address these issues, claiming that we can't change people that we should avoid to tamper with "free spirit of enterprise and will of greed". That's bullshit and everyone knows it. But those who in power like this idea and they will cling on it as long as they can. That's why I love people who don't talk about it but are trying to do it in current system knowing it's imperfect - like open source, Creative Commons, other sharing initiatives, etc.
In nutshell we need good old education about how greed can be serious slippery slope and how sharing can be good. Not in preachy way, but educating youngsters to think about it - what matters in the end - your fat paycheck or your happiness. And yes, you can't be buy happiness when you are rich and lonely. Education is the answer.
Use it with care, as it is development release with rather large rewrites and therefore not suitable for production use. For this release I honestly don't care about single window mode as I'm not Windows drone - GEGL improvements and usage, new text entry mode, and lot of other small improvements interests me more.
Official release in fall/spring (as far as I understood).
I agree with you, except Syria hardly violent revolution, it was peaceful demonstrations with emotional crowds for sure, but Assad didn't wait for them to turn violent - he just crushed them to show that dissident won't be allowed at any measure. Fact that he tries to do some cynical PR in same time just speaks volumes what he exactly thinks about his nation.
Those people on the top in Syria aren't that afraid from revolution than the fact that they will have to answer about their crimes.
THIS is about consequences. No one can shut you when you have to say something - but expect some punishment if something you want to say includes breaking the law in senseless way like looting and destroying others property without sensible cause. And yes, even you see your aim just, law just doesn't care. Judge might, but still you will receive penalty for initiating uncontrolled mobs and riots. If you want start a revolution, sorry kid, with all good intends it takes much more organizing than that. Otherwise mob is just a mob and in it responsibility and morality of individual goes down the drain.
4 years sounds harsh, but I don't know lot of details. I would go for 2 years, which are enough for thinking this trough.
Apple and Microsoft pundits worry about this deal more than Google analytics. I'm not saying that Google did it with ease in heart, but more or less they outplayed Billy and Jobs. Now Microsoft will have to waste approximately twice a half for Nokia if they aim to stay relevant in mobile market. No matter how profitable Apple is they won't buy Nokia, so their situation is much more difficult - either they give up and allow push themselves again in a niche, or they trying legitimise everyone in mobile market which is cheaper than themselves. In fact looking at Apple is a little bit sad - they have everything - growth, profit. But they are punished by "growth unlimited" vision by shareholders.
Only times when booting up is too slow is when you are recycling your computer too much - which is very harmful no matter how do you look at it. Suspend, sleep modes - use them. Really. Power off or power cycle your computer as less as possible.
Also I mostly have cared about boot time as indication that something is not right - some device is wrongly detected or broken, or some unnecessary services are running in background. I boot my computer maximum twice a day, but I do care about that don't use unnecessary services as I tend to max it out with sound recording and JOSM (OpenStreetMap Java editor) image processing.
Only place where booting times matter is mobile - and even then it is about perception - casual user would have to use suspend all the time and not to care is their system rebooted or what. It should work flawlessly.
I admit that it is very positively geeky to boost up speed of booting, as it also improves system performance overall (if it's not cheating and 50% of system is loaded in background while display shows login screen). But practicality of it is way overrated.
Judge doesn't care if Apple has legitimate case, he looks first if it does look like Apple can argue about something legal here. This action is to stop to cause damage to Apple (theoretically) due of illegal action. If Apple looses (and I bet it will, because otherwise they would have sued 6 months ago - now they are loosing market share and have launched lawyers to repair damage), they will open themselves to colossal civil suit with will eat trough their profits in Europe in minutes.
What is interesting that I didn't know that Europe has similar kind of injunctions than US. Not that I'm against them - product look copycatting is more reasonable to be angry about than software patents - but this case really looks moot and just temporary measure to frighten Samsung.
Another "Ohh no any company who stands against MS and Apple is doomed!" article. Please drop this sensationalist crap.
Have Google acquired quite list of enemies during last two years? You bet. Do they struggle to fight them? Hardly. Yes, mobile patent war is going on with full power, but in fact they can't keep pressing on because soon courts will issue judgements and will invalidate patents. They work as long as Google feels threatened by them and therefore can be controlled. HTC doesn't back down, heck, they intend to fight Apple in court. Samsung too. And rest of the world where software patents simply doesn't work just uses Android and Linux on mobile and don't give a shit. Of course Nortell and Novell patents buyouts are weapons to destroy Google. Of course Microsoft and Apple now in what legal shit they will land into if they will even publicly acknowledge this. Still, they want Google to feel breath on their necks. So in nutshell - Google do what they have to do. They fight for their rights to earn descent money making proper business providing clients what they want. They don't and won't give up just because Microsoft and Apple feels threatened.
Ohh, do you mean those subsidized phones which subsription costs (not talks, not data transfer) 3x a year? Or even if I own my phone roaming costs are still insane?
Get a grip. It's called capitalism. Sooner or later it is just Feodalism with few improvements. Want a real change? Ups, as communism is invalidated by bloody attempts to impose it to people, we don't have really a choice have we.
"The corporate world wants stability and good manageability damn it. They don't want a constantly moving target with questionable long term support."
Well, as far as I have heard, standards as HTML and JS aren't constantly moving target - and lot of free software available for web services tells me that coding for those standards it isn't actually hard thing to do. Ohh I see it is too expensive or corps are just too damn stupid to do that actually. Bullshit. They just fall back to old thinking for times when software companies like Microsoft or IBM did produce code you can't trust. IBM *still* releases so screwed up updates for their products so it would be very wise for them not to talk about stability, because they *earn* money of totally opposite process created by themselves.
You call it need for stability. I call it - we are just covering our asses because we can't say developers stick to standards and our leadership stay out of development (because constantly moving development target equals to hacks and hacks equals to need for "stable" (read as: constant version which doesn't change)) version.
I know, I know....corps have money and influence and it is stupid for open source software not to follow rules. I know. But it still doesn't make go away what I said.
Please not i4i case in same basket, because it is more complex than that. Microsoft literally stole their tech while working togheter. Yes, software patents are bad, but there are those who tries to use system honesly and those who game the system in the open (patent trolls, offensive pattenting from Amazon, Microsoft).
Before social network deniers are celebrating and saying "We don't need people to be dependent to this shit!", sorry guys, they already are. People are using Tweets for news what have happened *right* now. People are using this short form to communicate more effectively than any public radio/television have ever done. Denying these additional ways of communication between public press and people is stupid and back-crawling. Also there is quite fine line between endorsement/advertisment and just mentioning additional communication possibilities. For example, public tv news in my country have used Twitter and Youtube so successfully that people watch news again. They ask for opinions, discuss reports, etc. They are rising interest on what's going on in the country in new generations.
Well, I would like to see it in details. First of all there were huge wild fires last year, and we got harsh winter too - so CO2 release can easily be attributed to this. Also winter made lot of not so smart people believe that global warming is a scam or not so serious as thought and released breaks.
Anyway, we need long term technological solutions. People are working on it. So let's hope it will be good enough.
Well, nothing shrieks of despair like such move. In fact, we should not say that "Iran" does it, it is it's desperate "we will have Islam superstate yo" regime. They are so removed from reality that it feels like they are on their way to become second North Korea (hate ideology, armed to teeth, etc.)
I know that Slashdot has kinda anti-GMO crowd here, and it is quite mainstream for activists to be that way, but this is wrong. I'm all about carefulness dealing with GMO but this anti crowd is no better than homofobs - afraid about something you can't explain. I know, I know that this is again all about big bad corps again, but we don't live in socialism, guys. Corporations are doing good job with researching new products. However, they tend to neglect or ignore possible risks and side effects. But in nutshell - if goverment would do all GMO research, you would still be protesting, right? Because you are just damn freaking not reasoning.
Genetic modifications has happened since life on Earth, with or without help of other living beings. Heck, bees are doing this for million years. And one thing is quite sure - yes, you can screw up something big time, but it is also true that you can't really create Frankenstein - forces of nature it will tearn down/apart.
Now about gen-corps ugly pratices - genetic patents, cross field poluting, suing farmers out of existance - this should be solved by laws not by vandalism. Put your money on Avaaz.org or other organisations who does it proper way, pusing lobbying. Shouting angrily won't help your case in long run, no matter how righteous you are or feel.
WTF is with editors these days? First, title of article is totally wrong, because this legislation has NOTHING to do with UK, but with US per se (they had to brought it to US court where there you can still sue for libel, but well you can't do superinjuction woodoo). Article also makes sensationalist claims that this decision helps "That Another Football Player" case - well, it doesn't. This is one, concrete person, who is sued for libel. This is not injunction to stop the spread of information - people who will retweet this person message or information won't be liable for any violation of law as long as they will reference this user and his information accordingly.
GNOME 3 at it's glory; Fedora strenghts/weakneses
on
Fedora 15 Released
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· Score: 1
First of all, I installed Fedora 15 alpha/beta because I wanted to try GNOME Shell in production. If you have tried Ubuntu GNOME 3 team PPA, you'll know what I mean. It is also a problem because Ubuntu 11.04 lacks lot of depencies necessary for smooth sail (like NM 0.89/0.9 beta).
Nevertheless, I'm quite familiar with all kind of distros (10 years on Linux Desktop...ohh...it is that long already?), so Fedora isn't something new for me. It was also interesting to see what have changed over the years.
First of all, Fedora has solid repository system, using yum. Adding repositories are very easy (using special rpms with distribution configuration files for yum), and software is more or less up to date. It is huge change from antique rpm command only system. RPM Fusion repository fills your "evil side" needs like commercial codecs and software:) Also delta rpms are very interesting concept and while building delta change list requires some time for descent system, download size is cut seriosly, so this technology definitely has a future.
Fedora 15 ships GNOME 3 almost unchaged, in it's full glory. It makes sanse if we remember which paid for GNOME 3 development in first place. This is also reason why it makes sense to try in on Fedora.
I will skip detailed analysis about why I like GNOME 3 (or GNOME overall). Mostly because why I'm all for freedom to change your desktop at your will, I don't like to do it myself (too much real life I suppose). Anyway, while concept (for GNOME Shell that is) seems to be strange and you need to relearn some motor skills, it pays back after several weeks. Mostly GS works because it is very simple - top panel (you can't change it), Activities view with dock and that's mostly it. I'm surprised that I really like switching between apps using Activities view. with few windows it feels like too much, but with ten it definitely helps Also Alt+Tab with Alt+` is very nice touch (especially when you talk on phone and try to find app with another hand using Alt+Tab).
In overall I really love it. When I heard that Canonical will make Unity default as I was saddened because I thought it is the end for GNOME 3. Well, it doesn't - and if Canonical won't start deliver soon with Unity and someone will make serious effort to make good distro with GNOME 3 as default, Mike will have to run for his money.
Well, maybe you missed 'Applications' tab in Activities field, because it's all categories are available. Afaik old way of editing gnome-menu should work too.
And excuse of sticking USB without security protocol (can't execute stuff from USB drives) is...? Still similary stupid to connecting boxes to Internet.
...simply good old network security with hardened OSes (Linux, BSD, OS X) with seriously turned off all other services, firewalls and proxies with filtering won't do a trick?
Who is running industrial systems with direct contact with Internet anyway?
Sorry, but Skype going trough 80 port just because you have your firewall configured wrong is short term thinking and rightfully was followed by ban of Skype in corporations/universities/etc. And for your knowledge, SIP applications supports NAT for a quite a time already.
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: I'm musician and once I recorded bunch of pieces which took about 2 years of my life (real instruments, real voice, real mixing). Yeah, I'm perfectionist, sue me. They're released under CC now.
Sorry, but you are wrong and you can claim us as enemies as much as you want - you *don't* have any God/Nature/whatever given rights to profit. You have to earn it. Can't do it as performer or musician, you're not good enough, not lucky enough - sorry, but that's life. That's how things IS for rest of us. Why you should be different, huh? Why people who contributions are really worthy to public releases their copyrighted works under CC or PD or allow share non-commercially? Not all they earn big bucks. So tell me? Maybe they admit that music is just for their hearts, that it's not necessary to bring them profit?
For song and movie it is quite clear that even 20 years from publishing is way too much, but I could live with that. Tell me how many songs have gained creds for their owners after 20 years? Several performers comes into mind, all swimming in money already earned from these songs.
These extensions are not for performers, they're not for authors - they are for companies so they can claim that song is actually their property (according to law, it's not) and so they can tell shareholders - hey, we have billions worth of property, invest in us.
I second this. It is not that humans aren't greedy - they are, it's our survival instinct. But as you said, we justify and glorify it. We don't think about it as thing we could fix. In fact we do - sharing ideologies have brought more practical applications to real world than greed actually have done in last five years. I actually believe it's practically possible, trough education and clever public programs, rise awareness of possibility to share, to live together in balanced society.
I think we see it as dead end because we don't like other exits from this dilemma. Humans are animals at best Darwinist sense (no matter what Christians believes to. In fact it's written in Bible that we are "sinners" - we act on instinct and we don't know good from bad, because hey, I wanna live). They have instincts and most important - survival instinct.
It IS possible to crossbreed community rule AND survival instinct. However, even discussing this seems to be blasphemous in Capitalism. No one even tries to address these issues, claiming that we can't change people that we should avoid to tamper with "free spirit of enterprise and will of greed". That's bullshit and everyone knows it. But those who in power like this idea and they will cling on it as long as they can. That's why I love people who don't talk about it but are trying to do it in current system knowing it's imperfect - like open source, Creative Commons, other sharing initiatives, etc.
In nutshell we need good old education about how greed can be serious slippery slope and how sharing can be good. Not in preachy way, but educating youngsters to think about it - what matters in the end - your fat paycheck or your happiness. And yes, you can't be buy happiness when you are rich and lonely. Education is the answer.
Use it with care, as it is development release with rather large rewrites and therefore not suitable for production use. For this release I honestly don't care about single window mode as I'm not Windows drone - GEGL improvements and usage, new text entry mode, and lot of other small improvements interests me more.
Official release in fall/spring (as far as I understood).
I agree with you, except Syria hardly violent revolution, it was peaceful demonstrations with emotional crowds for sure, but Assad didn't wait for them to turn violent - he just crushed them to show that dissident won't be allowed at any measure. Fact that he tries to do some cynical PR in same time just speaks volumes what he exactly thinks about his nation.
Those people on the top in Syria aren't that afraid from revolution than the fact that they will have to answer about their crimes.
THIS is about consequences. No one can shut you when you have to say something - but expect some punishment if something you want to say includes breaking the law in senseless way like looting and destroying others property without sensible cause. And yes, even you see your aim just, law just doesn't care. Judge might, but still you will receive penalty for initiating uncontrolled mobs and riots. If you want start a revolution, sorry kid, with all good intends it takes much more organizing than that. Otherwise mob is just a mob and in it responsibility and morality of individual goes down the drain.
4 years sounds harsh, but I don't know lot of details. I would go for 2 years, which are enough for thinking this trough.
Apple and Microsoft pundits worry about this deal more than Google analytics. I'm not saying that Google did it with ease in heart, but more or less they outplayed Billy and Jobs. Now Microsoft will have to waste approximately twice a half for Nokia if they aim to stay relevant in mobile market. No matter how profitable Apple is they won't buy Nokia, so their situation is much more difficult - either they give up and allow push themselves again in a niche, or they trying legitimise everyone in mobile market which is cheaper than themselves. In fact looking at Apple is a little bit sad - they have everything - growth, profit. But they are punished by "growth unlimited" vision by shareholders.
Only times when booting up is too slow is when you are recycling your computer too much - which is very harmful no matter how do you look at it. Suspend, sleep modes - use them. Really. Power off or power cycle your computer as less as possible.
Also I mostly have cared about boot time as indication that something is not right - some device is wrongly detected or broken, or some unnecessary services are running in background. I boot my computer maximum twice a day, but I do care about that don't use unnecessary services as I tend to max it out with sound recording and JOSM (OpenStreetMap Java editor) image processing.
Only place where booting times matter is mobile - and even then it is about perception - casual user would have to use suspend all the time and not to care is their system rebooted or what. It should work flawlessly.
I admit that it is very positively geeky to boost up speed of booting, as it also improves system performance overall (if it's not cheating and 50% of system is loaded in background while display shows login screen). But practicality of it is way overrated.
Judge doesn't care if Apple has legitimate case, he looks first if it does look like Apple can argue about something legal here. This action is to stop to cause damage to Apple (theoretically) due of illegal action. If Apple looses (and I bet it will, because otherwise they would have sued 6 months ago - now they are loosing market share and have launched lawyers to repair damage), they will open themselves to colossal civil suit with will eat trough their profits in Europe in minutes.
What is interesting that I didn't know that Europe has similar kind of injunctions than US. Not that I'm against them - product look copycatting is more reasonable to be angry about than software patents - but this case really looks moot and just temporary measure to frighten Samsung.
Another "Ohh no any company who stands against MS and Apple is doomed!" article. Please drop this sensationalist crap.
Have Google acquired quite list of enemies during last two years? You bet. Do they struggle to fight them? Hardly. Yes, mobile patent war is going on with full power, but in fact they can't keep pressing on because soon courts will issue judgements and will invalidate patents. They work as long as Google feels threatened by them and therefore can be controlled. HTC doesn't back down, heck, they intend to fight Apple in court. Samsung too. And rest of the world where software patents simply doesn't work just uses Android and Linux on mobile and don't give a shit.
Of course Nortell and Novell patents buyouts are weapons to destroy Google. Of course Microsoft and Apple now in what legal shit they will land into if they will even publicly acknowledge this. Still, they want Google to feel breath on their necks.
So in nutshell - Google do what they have to do. They fight for their rights to earn descent money making proper business providing clients what they want. They don't and won't give up just because Microsoft and Apple feels threatened.
Ohh, do you mean those subsidized phones which subsription costs (not talks, not data transfer) 3x a year? Or even if I own my phone roaming costs are still insane?
...news at 11.
Get a grip. It's called capitalism. Sooner or later it is just Feodalism with few improvements. Want a real change? Ups, as communism is invalidated by bloody attempts to impose it to people, we don't have really a choice have we.
"The corporate world wants stability and good manageability damn it. They don't want a constantly moving target with questionable long term support."
Well, as far as I have heard, standards as HTML and JS aren't constantly moving target - and lot of free software available for web services tells me that coding for those standards it isn't actually hard thing to do. Ohh I see it is too expensive or corps are just too damn stupid to do that actually. Bullshit. They just fall back to old thinking for times when software companies like Microsoft or IBM did produce code you can't trust. IBM *still* releases so screwed up updates for their products so it would be very wise for them not to talk about stability, because they *earn* money of totally opposite process created by themselves.
You call it need for stability. I call it - we are just covering our asses because we can't say developers stick to standards and our leadership stay out of development (because constantly moving development target equals to hacks and hacks equals to need for "stable" (read as: constant version which doesn't change)) version.
I know, I know....corps have money and influence and it is stupid for open source software not to follow rules. I know. But it still doesn't make go away what I said.
Please not i4i case in same basket, because it is more complex than that. Microsoft literally stole their tech while working togheter. Yes, software patents are bad, but there are those who tries to use system honesly and those who game the system in the open (patent trolls, offensive pattenting from Amazon, Microsoft).
Before social network deniers are celebrating and saying "We don't need people to be dependent to this shit!", sorry guys, they already are. People are using Tweets for news what have happened *right* now. People are using this short form to communicate more effectively than any public radio/television have ever done. Denying these additional ways of communication between public press and people is stupid and back-crawling. Also there is quite fine line between endorsement/advertisment and just mentioning additional communication possibilities. For example, public tv news in my country have used Twitter and Youtube so successfully that people watch news again. They ask for opinions, discuss reports, etc. They are rising interest on what's going on in the country in new generations.
Well, I would like to see it in details. First of all there were huge wild fires last year, and we got harsh winter too - so CO2 release can easily be attributed to this. Also winter made lot of not so smart people believe that global warming is a scam or not so serious as thought and released breaks.
Anyway, we need long term technological solutions. People are working on it. So let's hope it will be good enough.
Well, nothing shrieks of despair like such move. In fact, we should not say that "Iran" does it, it is it's desperate "we will have Islam superstate yo" regime. They are so removed from reality that it feels like they are on their way to become second North Korea (hate ideology, armed to teeth, etc.)
I know that Slashdot has kinda anti-GMO crowd here, and it is quite mainstream for activists to be that way, but this is wrong. I'm all about carefulness dealing with GMO but this anti crowd is no better than homofobs - afraid about something you can't explain. I know, I know that this is again all about big bad corps again, but we don't live in socialism, guys. Corporations are doing good job with researching new products. However, they tend to neglect or ignore possible risks and side effects. But in nutshell - if goverment would do all GMO research, you would still be protesting, right? Because you are just damn freaking not reasoning.
Genetic modifications has happened since life on Earth, with or without help of other living beings. Heck, bees are doing this for million years. And one thing is quite sure - yes, you can screw up something big time, but it is also true that you can't really create Frankenstein - forces of nature it will tearn down/apart.
Now about gen-corps ugly pratices - genetic patents, cross field poluting, suing farmers out of existance - this should be solved by laws not by vandalism. Put your money on Avaaz.org or other organisations who does it proper way, pusing lobbying. Shouting angrily won't help your case in long run, no matter how righteous you are or feel.
WTF is with editors these days? First, title of article is totally wrong, because this legislation has NOTHING to do with UK, but with US per se (they had to brought it to US court where there you can still sue for libel, but well you can't do superinjuction woodoo). Article also makes sensationalist claims that this decision helps "That Another Football Player" case - well, it doesn't. This is one, concrete person, who is sued for libel. This is not injunction to stop the spread of information - people who will retweet this person message or information won't be liable for any violation of law as long as they will reference this user and his information accordingly.
You can use also Meta/Windows key too.
First of all, I installed Fedora 15 alpha/beta because I wanted to try GNOME Shell in production. If you have tried Ubuntu GNOME 3 team PPA, you'll know what I mean. It is also a problem because Ubuntu 11.04 lacks lot of depencies necessary for smooth sail (like NM 0.89/0.9 beta).
Nevertheless, I'm quite familiar with all kind of distros (10 years on Linux Desktop...ohh...it is that long already?), so Fedora isn't something new for me. It was also interesting to see what have changed over the years.
First of all, Fedora has solid repository system, using yum. Adding repositories are very easy (using special rpms with distribution configuration files for yum), and software is more or less up to date. It is huge change from antique rpm command only system. RPM Fusion repository fills your "evil side" needs like commercial codecs and software :) Also delta rpms are very interesting concept and while building delta change list requires some time for descent system, download size is cut seriosly, so this technology definitely has a future.
Fedora 15 ships GNOME 3 almost unchaged, in it's full glory. It makes sanse if we remember which paid for GNOME 3 development in first place. This is also reason why it makes sense to try in on Fedora.
I will skip detailed analysis about why I like GNOME 3 (or GNOME overall). Mostly because why I'm all for freedom to change your desktop at your will, I don't like to do it myself (too much real life I suppose). Anyway, while concept (for GNOME Shell that is) seems to be strange and you need to relearn some motor skills, it pays back after several weeks. Mostly GS works because it is very simple - top panel (you can't change it), Activities view with dock and that's mostly it. I'm surprised that I really like switching between apps using Activities view. with few windows it feels like too much, but with ten it definitely helps Also Alt+Tab with Alt+` is very nice touch (especially when you talk on phone and try to find app with another hand using Alt+Tab).
In overall I really love it. When I heard that Canonical will make Unity default as I was saddened because I thought it is the end for GNOME 3. Well, it doesn't - and if Canonical won't start deliver soon with Unity and someone will make serious effort to make good distro with GNOME 3 as default, Mike will have to run for his money.
Well, maybe you missed 'Applications' tab in Activities field, because it's all categories are available. Afaik old way of editing gnome-menu should work too.
And excuse of sticking USB without security protocol (can't execute stuff from USB drives) is...? Still similary stupid to connecting boxes to Internet.
...simply good old network security with hardened OSes (Linux, BSD, OS X) with seriously turned off all other services, firewalls and proxies with filtering won't do a trick?
Who is running industrial systems with direct contact with Internet anyway?
Sorry, but Skype going trough 80 port just because you have your firewall configured wrong is short term thinking and rightfully was followed by ban of Skype in corporations/universities/etc. And for your knowledge, SIP applications supports NAT for a quite a time already.